Learn about bulk SMS delivery

If you’re part of any kind of organisation, be it through work or leisure, you may wish to send SMS messages from a computer. Perhaps you run a business and wish to send SMS messages to customers or staff. If you need to broadcast text messages to a number of people, you’ll find things a lot easier if you can do so from the comfort of your PC. After all, sending a group text on your mobile can be a bit of a clunky process: having to select each recipient from your phone book with your touch screen is not the most efficient way to broadcast your message. In the working environment especially, […]

Over 2 decades after the first SMS was sent, text messaging has evolved into something which all of us take for granted as a means of communicating with anyone, anywhere in the world. However, during the earlier stages of SMS messaging, users were only able to send texts to a person on the same network as them. A few years later, when the ability to text across networks arose in 1999, SMS messaging exploded, with users able to pay around ten times less than they would usually pay for quick phone call, by sending a text message instead. Then came the increase of users travelling internationally with their mobile phones, who […]

More and more businesses, charities, schools, doctors surgeries and all kinds of other organisations are starting to use SMS messaging to send reminders. These can be for appointments, consultations, classes, lectures, things to remember to bring, or whatever else is a good idea to send a reminder for. But why send reminders via SMS? There are a number of reasons why SMS is an excellent way to send reminders: In today’s world there are very few people who don’t own a mobile device. SMS messages are instant, usually being received in a matter of seconds. The chance that a recipient might not notice your message is extremely low. And in fact, […]

Following the swift, steep revolution in mobile devices, businesses now more than ever must strive to go mobile in order to reach a greater proportion of customers. And although a number of mobile marketing methods are available, SMS messaging is the most effective method of discretely communicating with users at any time, instantly inviting them to visit your website or store and browse what your business can offer them. SMS brings numerous advantages to businesses that choose to use it, as it gives them the opportunity to interact with their existing users, whilst also giving the potential to create new customers in very effective ways. But how can you make sure you’re getting […]

SMS keywords are words comprised of letters (and sometimes numbers) which can be delivered to a short-code (a short-code is effectively a shortened, highly memorable mobile number). Keywords are usually used by businesses to make sense of all the messages that are sent to a single short-code, because one short-code can serve multiple messaging functions! Keywords allow a business to efficiently identify what it is a customer or staff member is communicating, based on which keyword they have sent. The beauty of this is that a business can build up an amazing network of sophisticated, automated SMS interactions; something that’s a lot easier to set up than most people think, and can greatly improve […]

An API (Application Programming Interface) allows two completely seperate systems/applications/websites to communicate with each other and exchange information. API’s can be used by social media platforms, for example Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc. so that separate applications owned by other organisations can interact with them. A form of agreement is established between two software providers which allows the communication of information between for example two websites, or a website and an SMS system. When a website or app requests you to ‘Log in via Facebook’ it is doing so through Facebook’s API, and clicking the button and logging in may share your list of friends or liked pages for use by the […]

SMS can be utilised by a range of businesses in a number of great ways. Here are a few examples of different departments which could incorporate SMS messaging into their communication with customers and potential messages they may send. Restaurants and Bars SMS messages can be used as a means to communicate with customers and inform them of any special dishes that may be on offer today – as texting is instant they will be notified immediately, unlike an email which may not be read until several days later, by which point it’s too late. Notifying them of ‘specials’ may encourage potential customers to book a table if they are […]

Computers store letters and other characters by assigning a number to each one, therefore they essentially only process numbers. Prior to the invention of unicode, there were several hundred different systems whose purpose was to encode and assign these numbers. However, problems arose as no single encoding could contain sufficient characters for all the languages in use today. The European Union alone, for instance, required several different encodings in order to include all of its languages. Even single languages such as English required several encodings as no encoding existed for every character, punctuation and technical symbol. Furthermore, individual encoding systems frequently conflict with one another, further justifying the need for a single […]

There have been a number of claims in recent years that SMS messaging is dying, and that other forms of messaging will supersede SMS in the future. The main driver behind these suggestions has been the huge growth of instant messaging applications such as iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, BBM, Snapchat and the like. It cannot be denied that in some countries the use of person-to-person (P2P) SMS messaging has actually started to decline (meaning SMS is being used less for individual people to contact each other), but at the same time there has been a global increase in the use of application-to-person (A2P) SMS (where SMS messages are sent from an application […]

Good levels of communication and support are crucial for small businesses to succeed. A personal relationship with customers is also key to establishing customer loyalty to a business and SMS messaging provides a perfect manner in which to achieve this. Text messaging is extremely personal as it provides businesses with the opportunity to target precisely the intended individual they desire to receive a message by delivering it directly to their phone number. SMS messages can be personalised even further through the use of a recipient’s name or referring to a particular event they are attending. SMS messages also provide businesses with the ability to contact their customers within seconds. Text message […]